WCR This Week

Churches unite, target climate change

CNS PHOTO | NASA HANDOUT VIA REUTERS

The Sheldon Glacier is seen in the Antarctica. Climate change is causing the world's glaciers to melt at an unprecedented rate.

December 2, 2013

JONATHAN LUXMOORE
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

When representatives of Catholic development organizations arrived in Warsaw to lobby for action at an intergovernmental conference on climate change, many also urged greater involvement by their own Church.

But Christians worldwide are already at the forefront in combating climate-change damage, which is being felt by many local Church communities.

In India, widely considered one of the world's most vulnerable countries, the Church's Caritas charity runs projects promoting agricultural and maritime regeneration, as well as new livelihoods in the face of rising sea levels, temperature changes and extreme weather.

Caritas is active in poor states such as Orissa and Madhya Pradesh, where tribal Catholic communities are affected, and has persuaded 3,600 farmers nationwide to sign up for initiatives to improve soil productivity and crop nutrients.

"Although there's plenty of land here, it's often dried up because of declining water irrigation, forcing people to migrate," said Father Frederick D'Souza, Caritas India's executive director.

"In the past, certain industries created a false myth that chemical fertilizers always produced bumper crops, whereas we now know they also inflict harm," D'Souza said.

"Catholic parishes and agencies like ours are creating hope by finding possibilities of adjustment and adaptation," he said during the Nov. 11-22 Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

In French-speaking Niger, whose 17 million mostly Muslim inhabitants are spread over a vast area of nearly 1.3 million square kilometres, climate change has taken its toll through erosion, desertification and the degradation of eco-systems, especially in the eastern regions of Diffa and Zinder.

There, too, Church groups are promoting regeneration and a move away from carbon-based resources.

An Islamist revolt in neighbouring Mali has risked ecological damage in some parts of Niger, but the minority Catholic Church has been doing its best to help, said Dissarama Sabine Attama, a climate justice adviser to the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar.

UNIVERSAL CHURCH'S VOICE

"Virtually all beneficiaries of our work are Muslims – it's through development actions rather than sermons that our Church gets its message across," Attama told Catholic News Service Nov. 20. "We hope the voice of small communities like ours will be heard. But we also need the whole universal Church to speak out about problems we all now face."

Orthodox Archbishop Seraphim of Zimbabwe and Angola told Catholic News Service that effective counter-measures are hampered by the Western countries, which "seem happier to sell guns than help governments adapt to climate damage."

The Orthodox Church needs more action with local faith communities and nongovernmental organizations, Seraphim added.

"As the climate pollution increases, people will die," he told Catholic News Service. "We need our congregations and communities to show spiritual solidarity with victims of climate change, by promoting a sense of the common good over narrow national interests."

Among submissions to the summit, the World Health Organization estimated that climate change was already causing an additional 140,000 deaths annually.

The World Bank said Nov. 18 the costs of "more extreme weather related to a warming planet" were set to grow, with developing countries "bearing the brunt" from floods, storms and droughts.

The report said annual economic losses had risen from $50 billion in the 1980s to almost $200 billion in the last decade, while the world had lost 2.5 million people because of climate-related natural disasters.

CRISIS IN PERU

In Peru, rising sea levels, advancing diseases and extremes of rain and drought are forecast to cause a six per cent drop in gross domestic product by 2030.

With terrain ranging from rain forest to high-mountain plains to coastal desert, Peru is one of the world's most biologically diverse countries. Although Peru hosts 71 per cent of all tropical glaciers, these are disappearing quickly, a development that will disrupt water supplies to Lima, a city of nine million.

In Peru, Catholic groups have promoted mitigation and adaptation strategies, as well as education and awareness on climate change.

However, Church leaders have faced problems from powerful mining, oil and forestry companies, which have government and police links.

Fabian Simeon, an investigator with Forum Solidaridad Peru and prominent member of the country's Civic Front movement on climate change, thinks the Catholic Church should do more to offer protection to those with the courage and determination to take a stand.

DANGEROUS STANCE

"Although some priests and bishops are helping struggle for climate justice, their work faces strong resistance and often places them in danger," said Simeon.

All four campaigners attended the Warsaw conference, where delegations from more than 190 governments sought to lay the groundwork for a new deal on global emissions by 2015.

D'Souza said he believed championing "climate justice" should be viewed as a new expression of the Catholic Church's option for the poor and gain new impetus from the pope's advocacy of "modest lifestyles."

"Churches must present a compassionate face to the world, showing how the poor are being further marginalized by climate change," the Caritas India director said.

"The Bible tells us we're stewards of the resources God has given us and must not allow them to be expropriated and misused."